Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail Alabama Mississippi Tennessee

Excerpt from Comprehensive Trail Plan: Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail, Alabama-Mississippi-Tennessee The historic Natchez Trail was a primitive trail stretching some 500 miles through the wilderness from Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee. The story of the old Natchez Trace is the story of a region and of the people who developed this trail into a vital road through the Old Southwest frontier. Although generally thought of as one trail, the Natchez Trace was actually a number of closely parallel wilderness routes. When the first Europeans arrived in the area about 1700, they found the Natchez, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians already using these rough trails into the interior of the lower Mississippi Valley. As American settlement expanded toward the southwest, boatmen used the trace to walk back to their homes after disposing of their trade goods and boats in the Mississippi River towns of Natchez and New Orleans. Today, the Natchez Trace Parkway, which commemorates the old trace, roughly parallels the historic route between Natchez and Nashville. Slated for completion in the 19905, the 449-mile motor road includes a right-of - way that averages 825 feet in width, with bulges at irregular intervals to provide land for associated recreation, interpretive, and management developments. Visitor facilities include comfort stations, picnic areas, campgrounds, marked sections of the old Natchez Trace, and interpreted sites of prehistorical, historical, and natural interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.